


All Worth It

by Leamas



Category: The Wind That Shakes The Barley
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Canon Divergence, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: After her home is burned in retalliation for the devastating ambush lay by Damien and the rest of the flying column, Sinéad is taken by another deployment of Auxiliaries, tortured, and then released to find her way back to safety. This quickly becomes the least of everyone's worries, as the consequences of this have catastrophic effects.
Relationships: Damien O'Donovan/Sinéad Ní Shúilleabháin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Sinéad

**1.**

**Sinéad**

When they dragged her out of her cell and into the cool evening, Sinéad was sure that she would die. It wasn’t the first time that she’d thought as much. No one had said that they would kill her, but when they choked her until black pressed into her vision and all the strength left her body, or when she was thrown against the wall, she had seen no other way that it would end. What they did to her was not anything that she thought could be survived, even now that she’d lived through it herself. When she was thrown into the back of the car and driven out into the countryside, down roads that she realised too late that she regularly biked down. She’d cried then, silently, although she hadn’t known why. One noticed, and wiped away the dampness under her eyes roughly enough to bruise her further, mocking her as she remained frozen, staring through the space directly in front of her and through him.

She was thrown to the ground unceremoniously. Sinéad braced herself, covering her head with her arms as though it would do any good. Her breath came shallow and quick, and she tasted metal on the inside of her mouth. She heard voices, then the deep running of the engine. There was nothing that Sinéad wanted more than to throw herself onto the ground and hide, but she remained frozen in place. Even after she was left alone, Sinéad could still not bring herself to move.

Finally, she lowered her arms. It wasn’t completely dark. She could still see the ground in front of her, and when she dared look around herself she saw all the trees and the road itself were completely still. Without the sound of the engine, the sound of the forest returned—the rustle of leaves and bushes as something moved through them, unbothered by her; the tremble of the leaves as the wind swept through them. Sinéad shivered; she wore nothing but her light undershirt and her skirt, grimy in dirt and blood and too thin.

She was alone now. As far as she could see, there was no one around. They hadn’t left her near any houses, and certainly not near her own, but she knew this place all the same. She touched the ground, and her eyes filled up quickly. Then she was crying again, weeping.

Sinéad had screamed while they had her, but it was all terror and pain. She’d been too petrified to do anything else, frozen in place wherever they moved her or cowering against the wall while she waited for them to grab her, staring up as though it would hold them back, to be able to see them. It never did. Nothing was enough. There was none of the fight that she’d put up when they dragged her from her house and cropped her hair; she’d been afraid, alone, weak.

This wasn’t screaming. She howled and tore at the ground, pulling up the plants within reach and clawing at the hard dirt. She wrapped her arms around her waist, doubling over, and sobbed until she couldn’t recognise the sounds that came from her mouth. As she pushed herself to her feet she was still crying, stumbling as she tried to stay upright. The noises quietened, and she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand as she looked around herself, as if she might find something that would tell her where to go. She knew the way home, but it was far, and she needed to find someone who would understand what had just happened. Her ma would know, as would her grandmother, but it was too brutal for even Sinéad to think about completely. She needed someone that wouldn’t shy away from the state of her.

Her right leg screamed when she put her weight on it, and she stumbled forward. Her back hurt, burned, and she felt the grind of bone in her ankle from where she’d been grabbed, dragged across the floor when she’d tried to kick them. He’d done worse than just drag her, and she couldn’t even make herself think about it even though she still felt it, and when she took another step she let out the dregs of a sob, the pain momentarily too great and the memory greater.

No one would know to look for her, here, and she needed to be somewhere safe. Somewhere with four walls and a roof over her head, and a familiar face who she could tell what had happened. It struck Sinéad all at once how alone she was, and she almost collapsed again as she realised it. She would have, if she wasn’t so afraid.

Ahead of her, in the dim light from the sky, she could see a curve in the road. It wasn’t far, and were she not so injured then she would be able to reach it easily. Now it seemed and impossible distance, but despite the pain Sinéad knew that it was possible to reach it. Burying her fingers in the flesh of her bruised arms she pressed forward, biting her lip against the pain, aware that she was taking longer than she ever would have under different circumstances. She counted her steps, trying to keep track of everything that her body did so that she could be holding her breath when she had to lean her weight against her leg—and then she took another step, and did it again.

When she finally reached the point that she’d been watching, Sinéad leaned against a tree and heaved, struggling to keep her breath steady. She looked behind her, worried for a moment that she would see them, but there was nothing. Resting her forehead against the cool tree bark, Sinéad tried and failed to think about what she would do. Nothing came to her. All that she had was what she knew—the road, and where Damien would be. How to reach him. She’d lived here for her whole life, there was nowhere around here that Sinéad couldn’t reach. Looking ahead, Sinéad stared into darkness, but she knew that there was a thick tree ahead.

Sinéad knew, as well, that she could reach it.

When she stood up straight she was shocked at how dizzy she was. How much blood had she lost? The pain burned through her knee a moment later, sending fire up through her leg and into her hips, enough to blind her from everything else for a moment.

The pain didn’t ease, and so she started walking, too afraid to stop. Even as she reached the tree that she’d been walking towards, she kept going, not trusting herself to not collapse if she tried to take her weight off her knee. She counted herself, looked ahead of her for the next landmark. She soon regretted not taking that rest, and so when she reached her next landmark she collapsed against the fencepost, gripping it with what strength she still had and struggling not to be ill.

Again, she looked behind her. There was no sound except for the occasional brush of an animal through the grass or a bird somewhere in the trees, but she didn’t feel better for it. How easy it would be for her to be picked up here. She wouldn’t be safe until was with Damien— _until she wasn’t alone anymore_ —but even thinking this didn’t help her to shake the feeling that she _wasn’t_ alone, that they were still there, pulling her apart and breaking through her as if she was a door to be kicked in.

It was that fear that kept her going. Sinéad didn’t dare to stop walking for longer than it took to recover just enough strength to move forward again. With every step she felt a horrible bone-deep pain in her knee. Sinéad was lucky— _so extremely lucky—_ that it wasn’t worse than this.

After some time, Sinéad was distantly conscious in the same way that she was distantly aware that a rooster was crowing, somewhere, that she would have reached the safehouse by now, if not for how she kept stopping. If she could walk faster. At first she only needed to lean against a tree or the embankment by the side of the road, but now every few steps had her bracing against something, for the momentary relief of taking her weight off her leg, which no longer felt like a leg but like a pillar of pain. She was aware of a deep hollowness within herself, something that made her hips and ribs and shoulders brittle. With each step the pulsating mass of flesh and agony in her knee collided with the rest of her. If she hadn’t collapsed by now then she wouldn’t, but there was very little room for any other thoughts in her head right now.

“Sinéad.”

She didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure that she’d really heard it at all, or that the sound should mean anything to her, but for some reason she raised her head in time to see Tim emerge onto the road with her. Why? It was a moment before she realised that she could see him, actually. That it was light. She’d been walking all night.

“Sinéad,” he repeated. “You’re here.” He was walking up to her.

She did little more than stare, astounded. She raised her hand in front of her, at the same time as he ran towards her, adjusting his rifle over his shoulder to free his hand, and then catching her. Sinéad hadn’t even realised that she’d been falling.

“They let me go,” she said, weakly gripping his arm. “I don’t know why.”

“Don’t say anything right now,” he said. “Let’s get you inside now. You’re safe now, don’t worry. I’m going to carry you.”

It was enough for him to wrap an arm around her waist, taking the weight from her leg. Progress forward was slow, their joint movement awkward and painful. All night Sinéad thought that she wouldn’t be able to walk further, but now thought that it would be easier if she could force herself through the final distance. After a few more steps she tried to push him away, but Tim didn’t let her go and she was too tired to protest.

As they approached the house Tim called out for someone to get Damien. All it took was for Sinéad to see the house ahead before what remained of her strength left her. She slumped forward, and surely would have collapsed onto the ground if Tim wasn’t holding her. Then others were there, other Volunteers and the woman whose house this was. She pushed through and took Sinéad’s other arm, telling the others off for crowding around poor Sinéad. Sinéad would have insisted that it wasn’t a problem, that they were like her brothers, but it was enough to let herself be brought inside, where it was warmer. Sinéad hadn’t even realised that she was cold.

“How long ago did they take her?” the woman asked.

“About four days,” someone said. She couldn’t put a name to the voice, nor a face. “She wasn’t gone long.”

 _Not long._ Had she the strength, then Sinéad would have laughed. Thrown out into the cold air again, nothing was familiar; everything looked sharp like it was tearing into her eyes, but she couldn’t help but see everything very clearly now. As though she’d never seen it before, and was trying to make sense of it. That was how long she’d been imprisoned.

“How’d you get away, Sinéad?” Ned asked. Sinéad raised her head, trying to find him. She shrugged, the pain in her back something heavy now.

“They brought me out here and left me, by the side of the road.”

“Why?” Seán asked.

“Do you think they told me?” Sinéad demanded, turning to glare at Seán. She tried to push herself away from Tim, but again he didn’t let her; she settled for glaring. “They didn’t sit me down and tell me what they were doing, they just did it. And now I’m here.”

“Come on, think for a minute,” Tim said. “Look, where’s Damien? Has anyone seen him?”

“He’s here,” she heard Rory say. “Not sure what’s taking him so long.”

“What about Teddy? He should be here.”

“Yeah,” Ned agreed. “We should probably find him.” He looked to Sinéad, wary. She could barely imagine the state of herself right now, her hair shorn close to her scalp and coated with blood from where she’d been cut, bruised and covered in grime. She pulled her arms against her chest, as if this did anything to cover herself.

She was brought inside, and brought to a small side room that looked like someone’s bedroom. Carefully she was lowered onto the bed, to her disgust. Quickly the sheer relief of being off her feet overtook her, and Sinéad let herself be lay onto her side. Her legs stayed over the edge of the bed, her bare feet touching the floor, and when someone tried to lift her legs onto the bed she cried out and so was left like that. The strain in her legs and back from laying at such an angle was insignificant compared to the relief of not standing. She didn’t want to move, not now or ever again. A blanket was pulled over her; she groaned.

She didn’t hear the door open, but knew that someone was with her. Without thinking she covered her face, bracing herself, then opened her eyes and was relieved to see something familiar—nowhere she’d been before, but a room that looked like it could have been anyone’s room, that could have been her room. It was meant to be lived in; not a place to die, or to be ripped apart.

Damien was in the doorway. “Sinéad,” he said, crossing the room to kneel in front of her so that they were at eye-level.

He was staring at her face, all while she could not tear her gaze away from his icy blue eyes. Then he was looking down, moving towards her jawline and throat, both bruised. The blanket covered the rest of her, and she pulled it more closely around herself.

“Oh, Sinéad,” he said—she liked how he said her name—and he folded his arm over his knee. “If it had been possible to go get you, then I would have.”

“I didn’t even think that you should,” she said, smiling just a little. “Damien, I’m…”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “Damien.”

“You’re here now,” he said. “Safe, now. You’ll let me see to all of this, won’t you?”

“I don’t even know where you’d start.”

He glanced towards the blanket that covered her, then down to her knees and legs still hanging over the edge of the bed. “Do you want to tell me what happened, or let me have a look for myself?”

No words came to her. She didn’t move, either, but simply looked at Damien. It was enough to know that he was with her, not recoiling and not reaching for her. She reached out a hand and he took it, carefully running his thumb across the back of her fingers.

“It might be easier if you let me see where you’re hurt,” he said gently. “I’ll do this however you want, though.”

She saw him raise a hand, and she took it, letting him help her sit up. It hurt, too, but no more than lying down, and her back felt better for not being twisted at such an odd angle. Damien leaned Sinéad against the wall, then tucked the blanket around her legs.

“Can I see, Sinéad?” Damien asked, as he crouched in front of her again.

She shook her head, not meaning to tell Damien ‘no’, but unable to answer his question. She didn’t know how bad it was. It only felt like pain down in her leg, but now that she wasn’t leaning the whole of her weight on it, it no longer felt like it was part of her own body but like it was just attached to her. Everywhere else she felt sore, and tired.

Sinéad held out her hands, her palms facing downwards and her fingers hanging loosely. “Fine. Do what you want.”

His hand was cold. Sinéad looked past her own dirty hands and the bruises at her wrists to look at Damien’s instead, long and delicate even as he held her firmly.

“You can make a fist?” he asked. “Roll your wrists?”

She showed him that she could. Damien made a noise of approval, which weakened something in Sinéad; she thought about leaning her head against his shoulder.

He didn’t let go of her hands. “That’s good,” he said. “Now, you don’t need to tell me everything that they did to you, but if you can give me some idea about where you’re hurt, then it will be easier for me to help you.”

Sinéad remained quiet. He squeezed her hands, and she raised her gaze briefly before looking away again. “They hit me. Mostly they didn’t do anything that I didn’t expect. I’ve seen men beaten before.” Micheál, who was beaten to death. She went through the same thing, now, except instead of being bound to a beam in her own home one of the Auxiliaries had held her, pinning her arms to her side. She’d been in a room with brick walls and no light, and no one to know where she was.

Damien squeezed her hands. “Did they use anything to do it?”

“Their fists, their rifles. They threw me against the wall and the ground, and kicked me. That’s how…” She couldn’t think about it. The worst of it, somehow worse than every other horrible thing that they did. A hand at her throat, another two holding her wrists against the ground. She could see, though, the long slow arc that the hammer made in the air, and what happened next, pain so white she forgot that she was in the dark, forgot who she was, too terrible, and every time she found herself starting to remember it some part of her recoiled.

Sinéad pulled her hand away from Damien’s, and gingerly touched her leg, to show him. Through her skirt she felt her leg, the pain that was coming from her knee. Damien was watching.

“Damien,” she said, her thoughts fleeing from the wounds beneath her skirt, rising to the surface in search of anything else that she could grasp. Anything so that she wasn’t dragged back down. “Is there something else that I can wear?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything else,” she said. “I don’t want to wear clothes that’s stained with my own blood.”

“I don’t know if there are any women’s clothes here.”

“I don’t care,” Sinéad said. “Anything else. Give me men’s trousers. I want this off of me, Damien. Get me out of this.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay. Let me look at you first, though.”

“Damien—”

“You don’t want to start bleeding on whatever clean clothes I find for you, do you?”

Reluctantly, she shook her head. “No,” she murmured.

“It will be okay,” he said. “Tell me what happened to your leg. Is that where you’re hurt the worst?”

She nodded, blinking quickly. “I think it’s broken.”

“No,” he said. “I promise that. If it was, then you wouldn’t be able to walk on it at all. Will you let me see how bad it is?”

“Do what you’re going to do. Just get this over with, Damien. I don’t care. What am I supposed to do now? I can’t go home like this.”

“You can, Sinéad,” Damien said. “Listen to me. You can go home. Your ma and grandma will look after you, while you recover, and it won’t be like this forever.”

“They can come back for me.”

Damien held her hand more tightly. “One thing at a time.”

“Don’t talk to me like I don’t know what’s happened,” she snapped. “I do know. I was there. It happened to me, not you.” She pulled her hands away from his, gripping her skirt and burying her fingers there in the fabric. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m going to help you,” he said. “So can I look, Sinéad? Can I see your leg? I won’t do this if you don’t want me to. We’ll find another way.”

She didn’t answer right away. She believed that he’d try, but they both knew that there was no other way that he could help her. And she needed his help. For the whole time that she’d walked, she’d been going to him, because he was the only person that she could think of who _could_ help her, who could hold her and make things better. The strength momentarily left her, and she sagged forward, wrapping her arms around her middle and doubling forward slightly. Damien didn’t more, or say anything else. She expected him to pull away, but he didn’t.

At last she nodded. Only then did he move, pushing her skirt up so that he could see her leg.

It was just as bad as Sinéad knew that it was, the knee swollen and hardly recognisable as a joint. Her whole thigh was a mottled mess of reds and purples, and bigger than she’d ever seen it before. There was blood. It couldn’t be attached to her. Sinéad didn’t believe it. Even as Damien touched it with his cold hands, and new waves of pain made her gasp and hiss, she still couldn’t believe that her own leg could look like that.

She searched Damien’s face for some reaction, but there was little there. “We’ll clean the cuts, but then after that you will have to stay off of your feet.”

“That won’t be a problem,” she said. “How much worse did I make it by walking here?”

He shrugged. “Better here than left in the cold.”

Sinéad barely remembered being thrown onto the road. It felt like something that had never actually happened to her, or like a dream. Sitting here now, there didn’t seem to be any space for how she was doubled over, wailing. On the other hand, the memories of being arrested and what they did to her for those few days all felt way too close, like she might turn around and see that windowless back wall of the cell, look up and see a rifle aimed at her chest ordering her to stand. She twisted her wrists again, her breath short. Her hands weren’t bound. She was here.

“Damien,” she said. “Am I going to die?”

His cool, even expression faltered for a moment. Before he could hide it, she saw how taken aback he was and she was afraid, certain that she knew what this meant.

“No,” he said. “No, of course not.”

“They didn’t have Micheál for as long as they had me,” she said quickly. “And he died.”

“But they meant to kill him,” Damien said. “Not you, though.”

Sinéad pressed her lips together, but nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s a good question to ask, if you’re worried. I think you’ll be okay, though. I should probably look at the rest of you, though.”

The rest of her. Sinéad forgot that there was anything else, except for her leg—except for the ache and exhaustion that held her in place, reluctant to move if she didn’t have to.

“More of the same,” she mumbled.

“Where else are you hurt?” Damien asked. “Your shoulders? Your arms?”

She nodded. “My back, too. Here.” She reached behind her, touching the small of her back. “Do you have to look at that, too?”

“I probably should.”

He turned away as she unbuttoned her shirt, although it didn’t make sense to Sinéad why he’d bother. He’d soon be seeing everything, although she supposed that she wouldn’t like it if he was staring at her; her hands trembled as she undid each button, and then with some effort slipped the shirt from over her shoulders. She couldn’t stop herself from grunting against the pain that flared in her shoulders.

She was still in her underclothes, but it felt like flimsy protection. Whatever Damien needed to see of her back, though, he would be able to.

“Ready?” Damien asked.

Sinéad held the filthy, blood-stained piece of fabric against her chest, then shifted slightly so that she wasn’t facing him directly. He’d said that he wanted to look at her back, after all. “Okay.”

Sinéad didn’t know what exactly she expected when Damien turned to look at her—some kind of reaction, like the wariness she’d seen on Seán’s face when she was first dragged in here, or however it was that Tim had looked at her. She’d not been able to tell, but just known that she didn’t like it.

He walked to her side, kneeling next to her. “I’m going to touch you,” he said. “Tell me if I’m hurting you, or if you want me to stop.”

“Do what you’re going to.”

Damien lay a hand on each shoulder, his cold fingers reaching around to her collarbone, then travelling the distance between her shoulder blades. After a moment he let go, then put one hand on her left shoulder and took her elbow with the other. She let him move her arm around the full range of its motion, grimacing at certain places and answering his questions about whether it hurt more than it had before, and if she could hold her arms without his support. She told him that she had; neglected to tell him how she’d been made to stand with her arms straight in front of her, an empty rifle balanced across the backs of her hands. And she’d done it, as ordered, the pain growing unbearably quickly, because she was too scared of what would happen if her arms fell. Inevitably, they did. It felt too silly to repeat to anyone now, even Damien, especially while he was looking after her. He moved to other shoulder, and repeated the process. Her arms were fine, apparently. He moved down her back, lightly touching her ribs and making note of where it hurt the most—the bruised ribs, if not broken. His touch was gentle, but impersonal. His cold hands moved lightly across her skin, never lingering. There was none of the tenderness as when he’d held her hands. And quickly, it was over.

“Okay,” Damien said. “It’s okay, Sinéad. You’ll be happy to know that it’s as bad as it looks, but not worse. You’ll be okay.”

She pulled the blanket up against herself. “What do I do?”

“Rest,” said Damien. “That’s the best thing that you can do for yourself now. You’ll stay here until you can walk on your own, but in the meantime we’ll send word to Bernadette.”

A pang of guilt rushed through her. She’d not even thought of her ma at all, or her grandma. How could she have been so selfish? The last that she’d seen them, the house was burning. It was little relief that they weren’t taken with her—they may not have endured what she endured, but that meant nothing.

“She’s okay?” Sinéad asked.

“Yes,” Damien said. “They both are. A few of us have been around there, done what we can.”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay,” he insisted. “They’re both okay. Your ma wouldn’t want you to be worrying about her right now.”

“Don’t tell her how bad this is,” Sinéad said. “I can’t do that to her. Tell her that I’m fine. She can’t know about this.”

Damien studied her carefully. “Is that really what you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it,” he said. “But I’ll have word sent to her that you’re alive, and you’ll be going home just as soon as it’s safe to.”

Sinéad nodded. “Okay. That’ll be fine.”

“And in the meantime,” he said, pushing himself up to his feet, “I’ll go find something for you to wear that’s a bit cleaner than this. I’ll find a way to clean you off, too.”

“Just a towel and water will be fine,” Sinéad said. Her skin itched, now. She didn’t like being without her shirt, but the thought of pulling it over her shoulders and letting her dried blood rest against her skin was unbearable.

It was later in the morning, after she’d washed some of the blood and grime from herself, once she was finally wearing clean clothes, that a knock came on the door. She’d been left to rest, alone, but she found that she didn’t mind being by herself. It was nice to close her eyes, the heavy weight of the blanket over her blocking out the light. She didn’t know how long she’d been left for when finally she was interrupted, but even as she called that it was okay to come in, she didn’t feel overly disturbed. After everything that happened, she didn’t have it in her to do anything but lay there.

She didn’t know why she was surprised to see Teddy there alongside Damien, but he was really the last person that she’d expected to see. Pushing herself up onto one elbow, Sinéad struggled to sit up, before finally managing to lean against the back wall, cold through the fabric. She let the blanket settle over her lap, although she wanted to wrap it around herself still, for warmth. It would be one thing to let Damien see her unable to sit up, hiding herself, but with Teddy that same thought was impossible. Had he been the one to find her, she would have walked all the way back here without any help, answering whatever questions he had for her. This was something that she knew.

“Sinéad,” said Teddy. “I’m sorry to wake you; I’m sure that you need to rest.”

“It’s fine.”

“May I have a moment?”

Once the pair of them joined her in the small room, and after they’d finished awkwardly shuffling around to close the door, Teddy turned his full attention to her. From the corner of her eye she saw Damien walk around the side of the room, to stand at the head of the bed, near Sinéad. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood back, basically leaving Sinéad alone with Teddy.

“I see that Damien has seen to you,” he said. “He’s told me that, although you’re hurt, you’ll be okay.”

“He’d know.”

“Is there anything that we can do for you?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m well-looked after.”

Teddy smiled, then, before nodding and again looking at her thoughtfully. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll leave you to rest soon, but there are a few things we need to talk to her about.”

“What do you need?”

“I just need to know what happened.”

“They hurt me, Teddy. Do you want me to go over everything?” Sinéad asked. “I’m sure that it isn’t hard to imagine.”

“I don’t need you to tell me every detail,” Teddy said. “I don’t have to imagine.”

Sinéad stilled. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologise. That isn’t what I’m here to talk to you about.”

There was no end to what they’d done to her, and although there were still flashes of specific pains and individual moments, most of it felt out of her reach now. She’d not been allowed to sleep, so just resting a little bit was a dividing line for her.

“I need to know what they asked you,” Teddy said, “and what you said to them.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sinéad said. “ _Nothing_.”

“Do you mean that you didn’t answer their questions, or that you said nothing?”

She’d shouted that they couldn’t do this to her, but that hadn’t stopped them. She’d cried and screamed, and begged, but that hadn’t helped her, either.

“They asked about you,” she said. “All of you, but it was you that they were the most interested in. Who you were, and where you stay. I don’t remember everything that they asked.”

“Try to think about it.”

Sinéad frowned, not sure what else she could say. “They wanted to know what I’d done for you. I thought that they were looking for their next reason to punish me.” Not that they needed a reason. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

“That’s understandable,” Teddy said. “I just want to be clear, would answering their questions have made them lay off?”

It could have been Sinéad’s imagination, but for all the cool, even understanding in his voice, none of it reached his eyes. As he spoke and asked his question, she swore that he looked at her with a strange sadness, which unsettled her. Had she ever seen him that way before? The only thing that Sinéad could think of was when he’d been brought to her, in the position that she was in now—exhausted, barely able to speak, his hands ruined. But even then, he’d been wracked by an exhaustion so deep that it left no room for sadness, or anything else.

“No,” Sinéad said. “It wouldn’t. They said that they would stop if I just told them what they wanted, but…” Sinéad trailed off, unsure how to articulate her point. There wasn’t a moment through it all that hadn’t hurt, even if certain things stood out as being worse than everything else. It was all so horrible, though, that Sinéad never really believed that it could get worse, at the same time as she’d never believed that it could be better. That the same hands that beat her and ripped through her flesh could treat her kindly, as was promised, or even that they could stop hurting her.

“I didn’t believe them,” she said. The ice in her voice surprised her. When she looked at Teddy, it was in anger.

“Okay,” said Teddy. “That’s good, Sinéad. Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t have done that to you,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t have, or at least I hope you trust me that much. At the very least.”

“I know that you wouldn’t,” Teddy said. The warmth in Sinéad’s chest was insignificant to the emptiness that she still felt through every part of her, that new hollowness that somehow filled all of her except for when it was filled with pain. But for a moment, as she looked at the sincerity with which he said that, the room softened. It was okay, she believed it; she’d done everything right.

Teddy left Sinéad and Damien alone again, and again Damien knelt in front of her. She took his hands, carefully leaning forward. “There, now,” he said. “Sorry that we had to bother you. You should try to sleep again, if possible.”

“I will,” she said, appreciating how solid his hands felt between hers.

“You know that Teddy doesn’t really think that you would have said anything.”

Sinéad had thought very little of it. At the time she’d been afraid; afterwards, she’d wanted only to be safe with Damien, even as she’d barely been able to bring herself to think of his name. “I understand.”

“We just have to ask,” Damien said. “Teddy just needs to know.”

“I didn’t say anything about where we are,” Sinéad said. “It’s still safe here.”

In Damien’s eyes, too, there was something funny. Sinéad didn’t like it, and so looked away. As she did so, Damien rose from where he’d been crouched on the ground, and sat next to her on the bed. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, drawing her close, and she let him. When he finally shifted away from the embrace, it was Sinéad’s greatest regret that he had to let her go, until she realised that he was only moving to be more comfortable. To lay next to her, drawn up against her.

“I didn’t expect them to be creative,” Sinéad said later, against the front of Damien’s chest. It should have been easier for her to fall asleep, considering. “They didn’t let me sleep. That wasn’t the worst, but it surprised me.”

“It’s torture,” Damien said. “Simple stuff. Think about how easy it is.”

“They didn’t leave me alone for a single moment,” she said. “Every time that I started to sleep, they hit me. Or they would make me stand.” It was worse after they hurt her leg. It wouldn’t take long before she would practically be in tears, so sure that she would pass out, the room tilting. How easy it would have been to lose her balance and just go down, but she was afraid of what would happen to her if she did. A few times, she found out.

Damien ran his hand along the side of her head, cool fingers brushing against the side of her face. Tired or not, her shoulders were still tense.

“I know,” Damien said. “Rest now.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sinéad said. “They said that they would take my tongue, if I didn’t need it.” The taste of rusted metal where they’d forced the pliers into her mouth. How they’d forced open their jaw with their fingers, pulling her tongue from between her teeth so hard that she thought it would be pulled out.

She buried her face closer against him. He still had an arm wrapped around her, and it was a relief that he stayed quiet. That he just held her.

“I don’t know why they let me go.”

“To send a message, maybe,” Damien said. “Like a threat.”

She clutched more tightly to him, although she had so little strength. It didn’t seem like she was doing anything.

“I don’t know what you want to do now,” he said, as he ran his fingers over her head, “but try not to think too much about it. You’re staying here with us now. After you’ve slept then think about what you want to do. If you want to go back home, I’ll bring you myself.”

She’d come here instead for a reason. She couldn’t imagine herself telling her ma about what had happened, the way that she’d told Damien. It would break her heart, and Sinéad wouldn’t forgive herself if she had a role to play in that. “I don’t know, Damien.”

“You can stay here, if you need to,” Damien said. “Or I look for a way to send you somewhere else.”

“Somewhere safe, you mean?” Sinéad asked. “There isn’t anywhere left. You know that. Everything will be like this forever.”

He wrapped her closer against him. Sinéad didn’t protest; she was too tired, too weak, and the strength in his slender arms felt good. It was only a moment later, listening to the steady rise and fall of Damien’s chest, with her ear pressed against his heartbeat, that it occurred to Sinéad that she didn’t want to pull away. This was where she wanted to be.

At some point Sinéad fell asleep, somehow. When she jerked awake it was the evening once again; through the window she saw the trees painted a faint blue, like what she’d first started to walk in the night before after she was thrown to fend for herself, left for dead or as a warning to others. If Sinéad was used like that then she couldn’t be sorry about it; she wanted it to be known what happened to her, so that it wouldn’t happen to anyone else.

Damien was there still, also sleeping. When she pulled away so that she could push herself up onto one arm, he didn’t resist, or respond at all, except to change how he lay and roll a bit back so that one shoulder faced the ceiling. The hardness in his face had bled out, settling into something softer that Sinéad wanted to touch, although she didn’t dare.

In the state she was in, she didn’t dare to stand either. There was no one to force her to, and now that she had rested the pain from the day before was even more remarkable. How had she walked for so long, when she couldn’t even imagine sitting up for long enough to seek someone that could help her?

Her gaze fell back to Damien, still asleep, his long eyelashes resting on his cheek and the deep look of concentration settled into something more natural. Sinéad lay down again, resting her head on the pillow. They were close enough that they could still touch, and Sinéad took advantage of that: she pressed her shoulder against Damien’s, tilted her head to the side so that the only thing that she could see was him. It was a relief, pure and simple. Sinéad vowed then that she wouldn’t move.

And she would have fulfilled this vow, had she been able.


	2. Damien

**2.**

**Damien**

Sinéad slept soundly, her face tucked against Damien’s chest. Very carefully he touched the side of her head. The wounds on her scalp where her hair had been violently shorn were still rough and scabbed over, what remained of her hair itself uneven, like a piece of shredded fabric. Someone would see to it later, after Sinéad slept. Despite how exhausted she was, it hadn’t been easy for her to rest, and throughout the day Damien was woken to Sinéad roughly turning about in the bed.

Since Sinéad was taken he’d kept busy, barely sleeping. It didn’t help him, and it certainly did no favours for Sinéad, but it was inevitable. When he tried to rest he grew agitated, and there was always something that needed to be done. It didn’t feel right to rest while Sinéad was taken, possibly dead. Seeing her now confirmed how wrong it was, that he’d not been able to go to her. Teddy had strongly advised Damien that he keep the issue in perspective, which Damien hadn’t liked even if he understood it.

He brushed the back of his fingers against Sinéad’s head. She twitched slightly, turning her face towards the bed, and he lay his hand across the back of her neck. Sinéad would recover. He’d seen to all of her injuries, and while they were all bad they were nothing exceptional, except for her knee. It would give her problems for a long time, but even the pain of that would lessen in time.

He liked the idea of keeping her with him, of looking after her, but he couldn’t imagine a situation where that would work, even as just a possibility. He _wanted_ to take care of her, but that didn’t change the fact that it wouldn’t work.

From outside of this room he could hear some of the others talking. Nothing specific, just a steady reminder that he wasn’t alone here. Damien had grown used to the constant presence of the others; had come to expect it, and to be so used to it that he noticed when it changed. From the distance he heard the sound of gunshots, and whatever peace had settled over him vanished.

Damien sat up, careful not to wake Sinéad too roughly. She raised her head, though, as he stood up, settling again when he touched her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Be ready to run, in case it’s bad.”

“How could I run, Damien?”

Damien hesitated, his hand just over the door. He looked to Sinéad, sitting up now, more bruised than she’d been the day before. She crossed her arms over her chest, like a barrier between herself and Damien.

“Go out the back,” he said. “Find somewhere to hide, and wait for me to come find you.”

She looked doubtful, but something in the way that he looked at her must have convinced her because she nodded, as much one of the boys responding to an order as any of the others. “Okay.”

Damien helped her to her feet as gently as he could, but quickly. There was no sense dragging it out, if she’d have to stand all the same. He was at least able to lead her through the house, to the back door and outside. It was early in the evening, with everything just beginning to cool down. He walked a ways from the house, towards the line of trees a short distance from the back door.

“If you hear any shooting or anything like that, then run,” he was saying. “Hide, if you can’t run.”

“How likely is that?” Sinéad asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, carefully withdrawing her arm. She grimaced as her leg took her own weight, and for a moment swayed before righting herself. When she looked at him Damien could see the fear carved onto her face, but there was that determination again. She looked better now than she had the night before, even given how all the bruises had the time to develop.

“I’ll try to find you,” he said. “Try to stay out of trouble.”

“Well I’ll do what I can,” she said, and quickly Damien turned back, leaving Sinéad to sort herself out. There was more that he could have said, but no time to go through it.

There was hardly any time to get them all out of the house, leaving it as empty and untouched as it had been before they’d arrived a few days before. They slipped out of the house and into the woods, and after a brief debate about where to go now—whether to try to make it down the road towards the direction of the gunshots, to run or to wait—Damien found himself again in the trees, looking down at the house where he had just been resting, barely five minutes ago. He looked towards Teddy, whose attention was fixed on the road, then caught Dan’s eye. They nodded to one another.

It wasn’t long before they heard cars on the road, followed by the too-familiar sight of Auxiliaries in their car, then on the road. The woman whose house this was stepped outside to face them, and a sweeping revulsion washed across Damien. It was only a few days before that he’d been in this same position, watching from the trees as Sinéad had been dragged from her house, shearing her hair, making her bleed. He hadn’t thought much about what he would do, wanting instead only to go to her—to shoot the ones doing it, to kill the others as well. The only thing that had stopped him was Teddy, _what good are you to her dead?,_ and some certainty that she would be okay. That they wouldn’t kill her like they’d killed Micheál all of those months ago. He’d known that, but not what to do as Sinéad was dragged away, thrown into their car and _taken_. He’d turned to Teddy, not knowing what he would say, but Teddy had known without Damien needing to say a word.

“We’ll get her back,” Teddy said. “As soon as we can, we’ll find her.”

It was in that moment that Damien realised he’d expected an apology, for keeping him there.

Teddy had turned his attention to Leo, murmuring something quickly and too quietly for Damien to catch what he was saying. Only a moment later he turned to Dan and a few others, gesturing that they should follow him. Leo slipped over to Damien and Rory, motioning for them to stay quiet but to draw closer.

“Teddy’s leading the others around the back of the house,” Leo murmured. “We’re to cover them, then follow.”

With all the chaos playing out next to them, the shouting and the sounds of destruction upon the house where they’d just all been hidden, it felt ridiculous to be whispering. Still, Damien kept his voice low. “We’re just going ahead, as planned?”

“Yes,” Leo said. “They seem busy now, but if we can get away without drawing any attention to ourselves…”

Rory had turned his attention back to what was happening near the house, holding his rifle steady. He had a way of holding his weapons less like tools and more like part of his hands, and right now that was both unnerving and a comfort.

From behind him, Damien heard Teddy say something, but it was quiet. He turned and looked, briefly catching sight of his brother, but Teddy didn’t look back towards him. Damien turned away, too, and drew up next to Rory.

“There are enough of us that we could take them,” Rory said. “Look. There aren’t that many of them, really.”

“Still too risky,” Damien said. “We’re just here to give the others the chance to get away.”

“Is Sinéad still in there?” Leo asked, and Damien shook his head.

“No. I told her to go hide.”

“Let’s hope that she has,” Rory said, raising his rifle so that it was ready to fire, should he need to. Damien did the same, readying himself for an eventuality that they couldn’t afford right now, with just the three of them there. Even if there were more of them, though, it would still be a risk.

He watched in the detached way that he would treat an injury as one of the windows was shattered, the door torn from its hinges. A number of Auxiliaries stormed the house, and Damien readied himself, thought about what they’d find inside, reassured that there was nothing that would drive them to do more damage than what they’d come for already. They hadn’t come for anything less than what they’d done to Sinéad’s home, and so in a way Damien had the reassurance that there was nothing that they could do that would surprise them.

The woman whose house this was, Annie, was someone that Teddy had met long before he’d ever introduced her to Damien. She was old enough that she could be their mother, but when she laughed, she seemed so young, bright-eyed like a child, and Teddy had a way of bringing it out in her. The rest of the time she was so serious and practical that it was really quite a shame, although Damien couldn’t blame her for that. She’d lost a lot in her life, that much was clear, and right now as a man was screaming in her face and as others stormed her house, she somehow had it in her to stand stoically as she lost yet more.

“How long will we watch this?” Rory asked, a snarl in his voice.

“Just wait,” Damien said. “Give the others the chance to run—”

Gunshots interrupted what Damien was going to say, coming from around the side of the house. Annie flinched, and the man yelling at her raised his head like a dog, listening for something on the wind. Without wasting the time that it took to breathe Rory raised his own gun and fired, shooting that man through the chest.

In the moments that followed there was chaos. Rory held his position and continued to fire, while Damien and Leo put some distance between themselves and him before joining. It was impossible to tell how many Volunteers were firing, as from a distance someone else was clearly shooting, but there wasn’t time to consider it and so the thought fell away, making room for Damien to consider how it was that he and the others would get out of there. What he needed was to get Rory away from the edge of the trees, giving him enough of an opening to run, but he was engaged in an aggressive exchange of shots, leaving hardly an opening.

“Get over there and cover for him,” Damien ordered Leo. “Once Rory runs, then follow.”

Leo nodded, then seemed to vanish. Damien stayed where he was, waiting until he heard Leo fire, then doing the same. Either there would be an opening and they would be able to get away, or once Rory ran out of bullets then he would be the first in serious trouble.

“Rory!” he called, trying to be heard over everything else that was happening. “Get out of here!”

Rory wouldn’t like that, but when Damien looked he saw that Rory vanishing back into the trees. What would be difficult now would be for him and Leo to get away, and the opportunity for that came in the way of another soldier from somewhere around the house, dragging a body out into the clearing. At first Damien didn’t recognise the man, with so much blood on the face, but only then did it dawn on Damien that he wasn’t wearing a uniform. This wasn’t one of them, but Ned, and there wasn’t time to be shocked by this, nor to be shocked as he watched the officer turn and open fire into his head. There was no way that he was still alive, even if he’d somehow survived the initial wound. Damien pulled himself away and ran towards Leo.

“Go after Rory,” he said, grabbing Leo’s shoulder to get his attention. “I’ll follow after you.”

Leo turned to him, clearly stunned, but then shook his head. “No. I’ll go with you.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Damien said. “There’s no sense for us both to be here. Just follow Rory, and I’ll catch up to you.”

“Are you crazy?” Leo said. “Where are you going?”

“I have to find Sinéad.”

“Where is she?”

“I told her to hide,” he said, trying to think of where she’d be, what he’d do if she was dragged out of the woods now, in the state that she was in. What he’d do if he had to watch her be hurt again. “Said that I’d be back for her. Just _go._ ”

Damien didn’t give Leo the chance to argue with him more. Slipping away from the front of the treeline, he ran around towards the back of the house, trying to look for anywhere that Sinéad could have vanished to. The smell of smoke was making him sick now, the taste of gun smoke in the air bitter. He couldn’t see anywhere immediately, and the sun had set so quickly that it would be really tricky to see what else was going on. He couldn’t very well call out to her; he had to find her.

He didn’t hear anyone approach until it was too late to do anything but raise his hand to protect himself, but by some luck it was just Rory that had found him, grabbing Damien by the shoulder and shaking him. Leo was drawing up behind him, leaning hard against a tree and gripping his side.

“Come on,” Rory snapped. “There’s no time for this.”

“I’m not leaving Sinéad here again.” Even just another night in the cold, in her condition, would be devastating.

“And I’m not risking my life for her,” Rory said. “Not after this.”

“What do you mean by that?” Damien snapped, but before he could answer back Leo had already stepped between the pair of them. Both men went quiet, staring at him; he looked so pale, it was clear that something was wrong.

 _It can’t be that bad,_ Damien thought, knowing that this wasn’t true. Somehow Leo was standing for now, but he was weak and he wouldn’t have looked so pale if he hadn’t been losing a lot of blood, or if he wasn’t in shock of some type.

Leo turned to Damien, gripping his shoulder more tightly. “We’ll come back for her.”

“Where were you hit?” Damien looked to Leo, then to Rory, who was now gritting his teeth.

“Just grazed,” Leo said, gesturing down towards his side. Although it was dark, with the shadows from the trees making it more difficult to see the stain of blood on the fabric, it was clear enough that it was worse than just a minor injury.

“Rory,” Damien said, but there was no need to continue. Rory took Leo’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulders. The difference once he didn’t have to keep holding his own weight was palpable, as Leo sunk forward, audibly drawing in a shaky breath.

“Is there anything you can do here?” Rory asked.

“Nothing that wouldn’t be made worse once we moved him,” Damien said, and he and Rory shared a look. If Leo heard what it was that they were saying, he didn’t seem that inclined to reply.

“It isn’t safe standing around here,” Rory said. “We aren’t far.”

About half an hour later Damien threw open the doors of the safehouse, half-dragging and half-carrying Leo with him. Tim was sitting inside, along with the owners of the house, and he looked shocked to see them, like he’d never seen them before.

“Would it kill you to hurry up?” Rory shouted as space was made on the table. “A man’s dying.” He ran over, taking Leo’s legs and helping Damien to haul him up onto the table.

Leo grimaced, his face a twisted wreck of pain. With a clawed hand he reached for the wound at his hip, which in the dim light Damien could see had soaked through his trousers. He didn’t touch it, his hands only hovering over the wound.

Leo was silent now, no longer grunting as Damien moved him roughly. He’d dragged him off the ground as he’d been shot, not wanting although Damien could feel him tense in pain. The light was dim and low, and he shouted an order for space to be made on the table, where he could lay Leo down to better look at him. This house belonged to two brothers who’d lived here for as long as they remembered. Damien had been around to look after them where possible, the one being of poor health and prone to illness and infection. If not for his poor health, Damien was sure that both brothers would have Volunteers themselves, rather than providing shelter and help where possible.

“What do you need, Damien?” Rory asked.

“Keep his hands out of the way,” Damien said, as he started to open Leo’s jacket to get a better look at the wound. Leo shouted. It didn’t look like it took Rory any effort to hold him.

One of the doors opened. Damien heard Tim say something, but didn’t particularly notice; the wound was worse than he’d thought, not haemorrhaging but bleeding steadily. Blood soaked through his clothes and glistened on his skin.

He turned to Tim. “Get water,” he ordered. “Find something we can use to stop the bleeding.”

For all the good that it would do. But the despair left Damien as quickly as it had come on, and he found himself working quickly. It was a clean wound; had gone right through his side, not a graze at all. How could Leo have thought otherwise? How’d he not passed out long before getting here? Soon he was cleaning the wound, then he was working to close it and stopped the bleeding. His work became anonymous, just skin and flesh; it could have been anybody.

The longer that Damien worked the more he was aware that he was no longer ignoring Leo’s weak, pained cries; his breathing grew laboured, ragged, and then it grew weak. Then Leo was dead, and Damien was standing over him, covered in Leo’s blood up to his elbow. He looked down at the wreck of the wound, the wreck of the body, still trying to find something else that he could do, but the flow of blood itself was weakened.

When Damien stopped, Rory took a step back, his expression hard as he stared at the sight in front of him. His face was unreadable as he asked, “There was nothing else that we could do?”

“No,” said Damien. “There wasn’t.”

Rory brought his hand down on the table and swore, but there was no need for him to be so loud. The rest of the room was deathly quiet, the sound of blood dripping onto the ground the loudest thing that Damien could hear. The sound of his own blood pounding in his ears began to quieten. From the corner of his eye he saw Tim sink against the wall, raising his head only to say something to Dan, who Damien realised had been here for a while.

“Let’s cover the body,” he said. “Damien, if you need a moment—”

“No,” said Damien. He turned to Tim. “Start cleaning the blood. Rory, go with him. Wash your hands.”

Rory’s expression, again, was unreadable, his anger hardening grief into something more distinct. He did as told, though, while Damien did his best to dress the wound. To make it look better. Leo was more than the wound that killed him, and his body should be more than a testament of that. Even if it wasn’t enough, he wanted to prove that he’d taken care of Leo.

When he finished, Dan followed him as he went to clean the blood from his own hands. Too many thoughts ran through his head, but he was numb. Shocked that the evening could have taken a turn for the worse so quickly, shocked that Leo was dead. He would have to report on this death to the others, as both the doctor and as acting commander, in Teddy’s absence. Damien would have to explain this to Teddy, he realised; he had to be sure that he could show his brother that he’d done what he could.

“I can’t believe that I was able to drag him all the way here,” Damien said flatly. “He died so quickly.”

“That happens,” Dan said, and Damien agreed. Even if he didn’t believe it, the reasons why it worked out that way still made enough sense to him. There was nothing that could have been done, and if it had taken much longer for Damien and Rory to get Leo here in the first place, he would have died on the road. Were the lighting better, and had Damien been looking at his face at all, then he would have noticed how pale he was. Damien hadn’t even considered that Leo could die—only that he needed help, needed to be saved.

“How many people are here?”

“A handful of us,” Dan said. “Five, maybe six.”

“Not Teddy?”

“No.”

“What about Sinéad?”

“She’s here with us.”

“Did you see anyone else shot?” Damien asked as he finished washing his hands, trying to rid himself of the feel of warm blood on his skin. The water was cool enough that he couldn’t have felt it, but he didn’t trust that.

“Not that I saw,” Dan said. “And what about you?”

“Rory and I ran away from the house, with Leo. They got Ned, executed him. Leo was shot while we were running,” said Damien. “We were lucky that we had any warning at all. If we’d been surrounded in there—”

“We wouldn’t have gotten out,” Dan agreed. “This was the best way that it could have ended.”

A retreat. One that was only partially successful; partially a failure. Damien was relieved to know that a handful of men had survived, that _Sinéad_ had survived, but that did nothing to stop him from trying to guess at where Teddy was—on his way here, alone? Captured? Or was he dead already? Was he on his way to find Finbar and the others? Had he been shot, and now was bleeding out somewhere alone, where no one could reach him? The only logical thing that Damien could think of to do was to strike out, trying to find him, yet Damien knew that he couldn’t do that. It was too much a risk, and the odds of finding Teddy that way were too slim, yet intuitively it made more sense for Damien to try to look than it did to just stay here, waiting. He couldn’t shake the image of Teddy in prison, after he’d been tortured. How Damien had known that it fell to him to protect his brother.

“So?”

“What?”

“Are you okay, Damien?”

“I’m fine,” Damien said, and he really did feel that he was.

“Are you going to see Sinéad?”

“I probably should, shouldn’t I?”

“She’s shaken,” Dan said. “I don’t think she’s hurt worse than when you saw her earlier, but there’s been a lot of excitement.”

“You brought her here?”

Dan nodded. “Where necessary. She was still able to walk.”

“It wouldn’t be good for her,” Damien thought out loud, and Dan snorted.

“It wouldn’t be good for her to have stayed, either.”

Damien couldn’t argue with that.

“Go on,” Dan said. “You won’t help yourself by just sitting here.”

Sinéad sat over the side of the bed, a tub of water on the ground in front of her with a wash-towel that she was using to clean the different cuts on her feet. Damien had noticed, before, that her feet were dirty and cut from walking along the roads at night, barefoot, but now the lacerations were deeper, more irritated.

She wiped her hands on her skirts, then made a fist in the fabric. Without thinking too much about it, Damien crossed the room to sit next to her.

 _Here we are again._ His anger was cold and controlled. He wrapped an arm around Sinéad, holding her close against him. He rubbed her shoulder, trying to pull her closer against him without hurting her more. What would be close enough? She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and he did the same. Although it was cool, it still surprised him to find how hard she was shivering.

“What else are they going to do to us?”

“Don’t think like that.”

“They’re going to take more of us,” she said. “They’re killing us. You saw how close they were to wiping us all out. Damien, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be this afraid.”

If it was possible, then he would take her away from here, put her someplace safe and look after her. There was nowhere to go, though. She was as safe here as she would be anywhere.

“Oh, Sinéad,” he murmured, with nothing else to say.

“No,” Sinéad said. “Damien, I can’t.” Rather than pull away from him like she had the night before, she held to him more tightly, burying her face against his chest. “I need to leave, Damien. Take me away from here.”

“Well what do you think that I can do now?” Damien tried to keep his voice light, but when Sinéad simply fell silent he knew that his intentions mattered very little. “There, now. Let’s think about this. We’re here now, we’re safe.”

“As safe as we were before?”

“More so,” Damien said. “This is a new place. We’ve never stayed here before.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he said, emphatically. Sinéad again fell silent, but she didn’t still. Her hand still gripped his, and in his arms he felt her shaking.

“Let me see you,” he said. “See if you’re hurt more.”

“To what end?” Sinéad asked. “You know everything that they did to me. Dan had to carry me, while we were running. I couldn’t move fast enough on my own.”

Damien could only imagine how it happened. Did he go back for her? Had he stumbled across her while he was trying to get away? Damien didn’t know; he was grateful, so grateful.

“Okay, Sinéad,” he said. “But you promise me that if anything gets worse, then you’ll tell me.”

As he pulled away, she looked back at her lap. Her hand didn’t leave the edge of his shirt, twisting the fabric through her fingers.

“You rest now,” Damien said. “Before we talk about anything else, you need to sleep. I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep. Is that okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologise for.” She pulled herself away from him, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm before scratching the space just by her nose with one long, thin finger. She wouldn’t look at him anymore.

“We’re killing women now,” Damien heard Dan say as he left Sinéad alone, carefully closing the door behind him. He met the others with relief as he saw Teddy among those who arrived while he’d been seeing to Sinéad, although Teddy stood closed off and restrained. Damien slipped around the side of the room, so that he could stand with his brother. From the way that Teddy stood, it wasn’t possible to tell if he’d been injured or if this was something else—pure nerves, pure adrenaline.

“I didn’t say anything about killing women,” Rory was shouting. “Don’t tell me what I was saying.”

“Then go on, tell me what you mean,” Dan snapped.

Damien slipped over to Teddy, who asked in a low voice, “She’s okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine,” Damien said, quietly. “She’s fine.”

Rory’s attention turned away from Dan, to Damien. “Fine? She wasn’t hurt?”

The anger in Rory’s voice shocked him. Damien shook his head, although there was something here that he didn’t like. The glare on Dan’s face, and how Teddy stilled just next to him. There was something wild about Rory’s anger, too.

“I want to see her,” Rory said. “Ask her what that was, back there.”

“What are you talking about?” Damien asked, hearing the edge in his own voice.

“Rory thinks that Sinéad told them where we are,” Seán said. “That this is why they let her go.”

“You’re joking,” Damien said, although Rory very evidently was not. And thinking back to what Rory had said on the way here, he knew that. A bark of laughter escaped his mouth, and he looked among those that were there. “Do you think she’s in any state to be seeing anyone right now?” Damien asked. “Just leave her. There are more important things that we have to worry about.”

“I don’t think there are,” Rory said. He took a moment to look at each of them. “Are you all missing something? She brought them to us. She told them where we were.”

“We don’t know that,” Dan said. “And Damien’s right. Let her sleep. We’ll sort this out ourselves.”

“What is there to sort out?” Rory demanded. “Come on, all of you. Are we just going to ignore this? She comes back, and that night we’re discovered? Ambushed? Leo and Ned are dead. Do you think it’s just a coincidence?” Rory snapped. “Come on, Dan. You’re smarter than that.”

“They could have followed her back,” Dan said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s her fault.”

“She could have led them back,” Rory said. “Why else would she come to us, and not go back home?”

“You saw how hurt she was,” Damien said. “She needed a doctor.”

Thoughts of Sinéad flooded through him. How she couldn’t even make herself look at him, but nor would she let go of him. He’d never thought of her as fragile before—not after Micheál’s death, when she’d grown distant for a time when he’d tried to visit her, but rather than shutting herself away had gone to Teddy, asking what she could do to help, because she was angry. It wasn’t the loud, explosive rage that he saw on Rory now, nor the cold but clear sense of injustice fitted through him when he first met Dan, or after what they’d done to Teddy, but it was anger all the same. A quiet, subtle anger, but hers. And she certainly hadn’t seemed fragile that day when he’d told her about Chris. Her arms around him were solid and warm, and for the first time since he’d shot Chris he felt real again, and not just like the resounding echo of the gunshot in that moment.

“Do you think that she held out?” Rory asked, clearly not looking for what Damien actually thought. “Do you really think she could have resisted, while they did that to her?”

“Yes,” Damien said.

“You _really_ think that. You think she’s as strong as Teddy?”

Next to him, Damien felt Teddy stand straighter, but ignored it.

“Could you?” Damien said. “Are you that strong?”

“Do you think I’ve never taken a beaten before?”

“Sure, of course you have. But have you been tortured? What would you do if your hands were broken, or your legs? Would you still be this brave if you were looking at a life without your hands, or your eyes, or your tongue?”

Rory fixed Damien with a hard look, his restraint more forceful than his usual quick temper. “Yes.”

“Well, I’m glad that you know that about yourself, in case it ever happens to you. You can compare.”

“Do you have a point?”

“It has happened to Sinéad,” Damien said. “Not to you, or to me.”

“And you think she kept quiet?”

“Yes.”

“So I suppose that we should just take your word for it.”

“Take her word for it. I believe her,” Damien said, and he would have left it at that if Rory had only not rolled his eyes, turning to Dan. “So does Teddy. So did Leo, for that matter. You don’t know what they’ve done to her. You haven’t seen it! She wouldn’t have gone through as much as she did only to give in.”

He should be with her now, keeping watch while she slept. He should be there when she woke, reminding her that she was safe. As safe as she could be. He wanted to hold her, to touch her, if she would allow it—if it didn’t hurt her too much. Otherwise he just wanted to be there with her. Sinéad needed him now. She had done so much, but she’d reached some limit. This was as much as she could do; asking anything more would break her more completely than the Auxiliaries had, and Damien wouldn’t be the one to do it nor would he allow it. When she’d helped him clean Teddy’s ruined hands, he never imagined that it would be Sinéad that was so crushed, but she’d reached the limit of what she could bear and was then thrown across that dividing line.

And if she had said anything? Thinking about the state of her body, with her swollen joints and the bruises that penetrated her skin and reached down to the bone, then Damien would have understood.

Just thinking this felt tantamount to betrayal, because one look at Rory made it clear that Rory would not understand, nor would he be forgiving. It felt like a betrayal to Sinéad, too—to her integrity, her strength. After everything that she’d been through, was he really even entertaining this idea? If he was going to seriously even consider this then he may as well tell Rory that he was right, and start pleading for lenience.

He knew Sinéad; she said that she’d not said anything, then he believed her.

“We were compromised, Damien,” Rory was saying. “Does that not mean anything for you? Or is it okay because we got lucky this time, had some warning before they rounded us all up again?”

“Think about it!” Damien snapped. “She hates the Tans just as much as the rest of us. She’s done everything that we’ve asked of her.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rory countered. “We aren’t giving her a review of her excellence here.”

“Sinéad wouldn’t say anything,” Damien said. “She just wouldn’t. Her brother was murdered by them.”

“So?” Rory shouted. “What’s your point? So were my brothers! Both of them! There isn’t a single one of us here who hasn’t suffered, personally.”

“Why do you think she’s weak?”

“You saw the state of her.”

“And?”

“What do you think they did when they took her away?” Rory snapped. “Brought her inside, fed her, gave her some tea? Do you think they had a nice chat, and then let her go when she said ‘no’? Think about it, Damien.”

“Well why would she be hurt so badly if she was going to talk? If she’s as weak as you seem to think she is?”

“Do you really think that she could hold out, or do you just not want to love a traitor? Not want to have to execute her, like you did to Chris?”

“I suppose you’re volunteering,” Damien snapped.

Something vicious crossed Rory’s face—nothing Damien had never seen before, but now it was directed at him. It would have unsettled Damien less if Rory had taken the position of not wanting to say it, but clearly volunteering for his own reasons. That smug assurance that he would do what others wouldn’t, and enjoyed knowing this about himself. There would have been something predictable if Damien had looked to Rory and found that he wanted to execute Sinéad, whether to make a point or because Rory was too damn easy with a gun, too at home with settling everything with blood.

“That’s enough, now,” Teddy said, stepping forward. “This isn’t a conversation that we should even be having right now.”

“Do you also think that she had nothing to do with this?” Rory snapped.

Neither man said anything for a moment; Dan stayed quiet as well, crossing his arms but fixing his gaze on Rory, waiting for something to happen.

“I’ll see to her later,” Teddy said. “Unless there’s a reason why you don’t think that it can wait.”

“I don’t think that she’ll turn on us again,” Rory said, “if that’s what you mean. I don’t think that there will be a second ambush.”

“We don’t know that this is what happened,” Dan reminded Rory. “If there’s the possibility that the woman who was tortured didn’t deliberately lead soldiers to us, then I’m at least going to consider that before I start calling for her blood.”

On Teddy’s face Damien saw something uneasy, not unlike what he’d seen of Teddy the night before, when he’d come to ask Sinéad the unfortunate question that he and Rory were arguing about now. Had Teddy looked down to Sinéad’s hands, searching for shadows of what had been done to him? Damien knew his brother; knew that Teddy would have looked, but that he wouldn’t have been obvious about it. Something like this was exactly what Teddy would have wanted to consider, and it was just what Damien had learned a long time ago to back off about.

“What would it take to happen before you think it’s enough?” Rory said. “For her to go to them willingly?”

“Rory!” Teddy snapped. “Shut up. I won’t hear another word about this tonight. And I won’t hear another word from you at all if you won’t admit that there’s a _difference_ between being tortured and choosing to turn on your brothers.”

“Leo is still dead either way.”

“Yes,” Teddy said. “So is Ned. I never said this won’t have to be dealt with.”

There wasn’t much more said about this, and this was obvious when Rory held his tongue. Those who were gathered slowly began to disperse, and as Teddy made to slip away Damien took his brother’s arm, drawing Teddy to the side.

He wasn’t wrong to assume that Teddy was distracted, although he soon had Teddy’s full attention. The exhaustion on his brother’s face stunned him, but Damien let that observation wait; it was no different to the coldness that he’d felt, in lieu of anything else, since Chris’ death.

“Are you hurt?” Damien asked. “Any of you?”

“We’re fine,” said Teddy. “And you? Any of you?”

“I’m fine,” Damien said. “Leo… I’m sorry, and sorry that this is how you found out.”

He watched Teddy’s face, the barely-flicker of grief on Teddy’s face, and how then something changed in the set of his jaw. He nodded, his gaze slightly distant and far away, before his attention turned back to what was in front of him.

“He was with you?”

“He died here,” Damien said. “There wasn’t anything else that we could do.”

“Did he suffer?”

“No,” Damien lied, sure that Teddy knew that it was a lie. There was no gentle death, only worse ones. Teddy accepted it without question.

“I’m glad that he was with you,” Teddy said. “Did you know how it happened?”

“Nothing remarkable.”

Teddy nodded. “Okay. Damien, I hate to ask this of you now, but what was Rory trying to say? About Sinéad?”

“Nothing that you can’t already gather,” Damien said. “It’s not true, Teddy. I’m sure of that. He has it in his head that Sinéad deliberately led them to us, or that it’s just as bad if they followed her. I don’t think that he’s going to be a voice of reason about this.”

“That’s fine. I don’t expect it from him.”

“You know that it isn’t true,” Damien said.

By the remoteness of Teddy’s gaze he himself was suddenly no longer sure of that at all. The thought came to him again, the desire to argue with Teddy that he of all people should know that even if Sinéad had been driven to talk by the torture that she’d been put through, it was hardly something that she could be blamed for—not everyone could be strong like Teddy, enduring past physical limits that would drive anyone mad.

He kept the thought to himself, though.

“I said that I wouldn’t be discussing this tonight in any detail,” Teddy said. “Stay with her. I don’t think that anyone will cause her any trouble, but we have to deal with this better than we are.”

“Well, that’s the most that we could ask right now,” Damien said, “evidently.”

Teddy’s smile was not without sympathy, but it did little to actually comfort Damien, the way that it might have at one point in the past.

Around noon the next day word came from Finbar. Damien was with Teddy at the time, listening as he and Dan went back-and-forth about the different options for what they could do now. Under different circumstances, even just a day ago, Leo would have been here, with Dan and Damien weighing into the discussion with their perspective from time to time—assuming that whatever decision Teddy reached wasn’t something made separate to the rest of them, as had become Teddy’s way in recent months. Frustrating, but not awful the way that this space made by Leo’s absence in just a night had become awful, nearly unbearable. That Teddy seemed unbothered by it wasn’t much of a comfort at all.

The news of a truce was both a relief and a weight placed upon them. As the word spread among them, it was clear that others felt this way, too—if it had only been the day before, then two more of their own would still be here. That wasn’t a good enough reason not to let the momentary joy crowd out all other thoughts, relief creeping into him as acutely as he might have felt an ache in his legs or a physical exhaustion: were it the day before, then Damien would have thought that only a few days earlier, and Sinéad could have been spared. There was no end to the horrors that had happened, no limit to what Damien would have wanted to peel back.

There was an unmistakable satisfaction in Rory when Damien saw him. Whatever had passed between them the night before seemed to have faded without comment, nor with apology, and Rory seemed calm enough when he had Damien’s attention.

“Not the circumstances that I thought we’d hear this news,” Rory said.

“Did you ever think that we would?” Damien asked. “Did you think that far ahead?”

“There wasn’t time. I didn’t think that it would be like this, though.”

Whatever bitterness Rory’s words might have caried seemed lessened by a lightness in the air, wrapped around all of them. Undeniably Leo and Ned both should have been there to see this, as much as every other one of them who was still alive. So should all the others that were lost. It was all bitterly unfair that this didn’t happen, and the recent loss hanging above all of them ensured that this was felt acutely.

“Have you told Sinéad about this yet?” Rory asked, by way of acknowledgement towards what had been said the day before.

“Not yet,” said Damien.

“I’m sure she’ll want to know,” he said.

“I’m going to see her now,” Damien said. “Tell her the good news.”

Rory nodded, and that would be the last that the pair of them said on the subject, as if everything said the night before wasn’t worth considering. Maybe it wasn’t. Damien didn’t agree with Rory at all, and was disgusted by what happened, but he knew Rory. And in turn, Rory knew Sinéad. Right now, Damien wasn’t going to consider in any detail what Rory thought of Sinéad, whether it had just been said in the immediate aftermath of Leo’s death or if he truly believed her to be as culpable of what he’d accused her of.

Damien knocked on Sinéad’s door, letting himself in when she called that it would be okay. Inside, Sinéad was alone, laying down and only partially covered with a blanket. The swelling and bruising were no worse than it had been the day before, but still no better either. If anything, Sinéad now looked to be more in pain, or at least more uncomfortable, now that she was no longer so exhausted and afraid that everything else paled in comparison.

“Damien,” she said, as he shut the door behind her.

“Don’t sit up,” he said, hurrying to her side so that he might kneel on the floor next to her. He took her wrist in one hand, resting a hand on her shoulder with the other to keep her from trying to rise so she might see him at more of an eye-level.

This was enough, to be kneeling before her. It was enough to just be able to touch her, and it was to his relief that he had more that he could give her: not safety, but something very much like it.

“Did you hear?” Damien asked.

Sinéad looked at him strangely. Had she more strength, then he was sure that she would have been gripping his hand tightly, but for now that wasn’t possible.

“Am I to be executed at dawn?” Sinéad asked, her voice hoarse. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not; by the look on her face, the way that she rolled onto her side with a tremendous effort so that she could touch him with both hands, staring at him all the while, Damien had the sense that she didn’t know either.

“No,” he said. “Sinéad, of course not.”

“Teddy came to see me this morning,” she said. “Woke me up. It seemed urgent.”

“Did he, now.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if he was angry at me, or not. He accused me of all sorts.”

“What?”

She shook her head, her gaze dropping before quickly returning, with at least a familiar anger present there. Whatever it was, Damien was careful to ensure that his own expression didn’t match the look on her face; to be neutral as he listened to her, like a promise.

“He asked if I was sure that I’d not said anything,” she said. “That he had to consider how it was that we were found yesterday. He thinks that I had something to do with it, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know what my brother thinks,” Damien said, “but I don’t think that it matters at this point.”

Sinéad let out a barking laught, trying to pull her hands away from Damien. He let her, and she did nothing more than to let them fall onto the bed in front of her, not moving more than that. Not having the strength to really do that, at all.

“I don’t know if he blames me for it or not,” she said. “Or if he blames me for not taking it as well as he did, what happened to us. As if he was in much better of a state than me, when he came back. He couldn’t say a word, Damien. You remember that.”

It wasn’t a memory that Damien was keen to revisit, even if what Sinéad said was true. In all of his memories, Damien recalled the anger threaded through Teddy’s silence—his refusal to say a word, although he couldn’t stop himself from screaming. This Damien remembered. It was hard to think of the silence that followed as being part of that, when Teddy lay across his lap, and then at Sinéad’s house, where he also didn’t speak but seemed to focus all of his efforts inwards as Damien treated his hands. For the most part they’d left him alone, letting him sleep and rest where possible, until the next day when he’d called for Damien’s attention. Even then he’d not been overly talkative, and it was weeks before it seemed that they could call what happened something in the past, rather than an ongoing issue. As soon as Teddy had his hands back, he seemed pleased to forget it.

“Sinéad,” he said, rising up slightly. “Of course I remember. Teddy… he has to consider every option. He wasn’t blaming you, I know that he doesn’t think this.”

She looked at him. “How do you know this?”

“He has to consider every possibility,” Damien said. “If he came and was accusing you…”

“I don’t know what he was thinking, Damien.”

“He’s my brother,” Damien said, “and even I don’t always know. He wouldn’t blame you, though. It’s his responsibility to ask, that’s all.”

Sinéad watched him for a moment, then looked back at the ceiling. “What are you here for?”

Damien braced himself, as though he were delivering bad news. “There’s been a truce called, as of noon tomorrow. We just got word of this now, not long before I came to see you. I don’t even know if Teddy knows all of the details. I’ve not seen him yet.”

She watched attentively, before nodding. “Is that really what’s happening.”

“Yes,” he said. “Why would I lie about this?”

Sinéad raised one of her own hands to cover her eyes, momentarily silent. He didn’t know whether she was crying or hiding; whether it made a difference. What would she do if she were in the room by herself?

The weight of Damien’s words had settled upon them, and for the first time it was really occurring to Damien just what it was that had happened. He wanted to reach out and touch Sinéad, pulling her closer to him. Instead he just sat at her side, putting her hands in her lap.

“That’s why it doesn’t matter,” she said, “whether anyone thinks I’m responsible for what happened yesterday.”

“I don’t know who thinks that,” Damien said, as if it matters. “I don’t even know if Teddy does.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Why would it, if there’s a truce?”

“Don’t blame him for that,” Damien said. “Look, I’ll talk to him—”

“No. Don’t. It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “At least not to anyone else.”

“It matters,” Damien insisted. “You’ve done too much to be remembered like this. You were tortured for us.”

Carefully, she lowered her hand, turning her face to look at Damien. She didn’t look as distraught as Damien feared that she would, although there was no peace in her face. “Well? What do you think?”

“It wasn’t your fault, what happened yesterday,” he said. “I don’t think that you said anything, either. And I don’t think anyone else will be passing around word that it is your fault.”

Damien didn’t think for a moment that anything he said made much of a difference for Sinéad. If ever his words would help her, it wasn’t now, with the wounds inflicted upon her body and the losses of two of their own too fresh; both were a raw injury that made even good news hurt to receive it. But Sinéad nodded, accepting what he said.

“It is good news,” she said. “Makes it all worth it, doesn’t it? Everything that we’ve been through?”

“Yes,” Damien said, relieved to see the sincerity in her as she said it and to find that same sincerity in himself as he replied.


End file.
